Giving a speech or doing a demonstration at a 4-H club day

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4-H is a national youth development program administered by the Cooperative Extension System under the U. S. Department of Agriculture. The name refers to a focus on personal qualities of Head, Heart, Hands, and Health. 4-H clubs provide youth opportunities related to agriculture, civic engagement, healthy living and STEM.

 

Back on August 19, 2012 I had blogged about watching A 4-H speech at the Western Idaho Fair. 4-H clubs have speech contests for teenagers (and younger children). State (or provincial) university extension services responsible for 4-H clubs have detailed instructional materials about giving presentations, which are useful for all teenagers. Here are some examples:

 

California

There is a 58-page pdf article from the University of California revised on January 28, 2021 and titled 4-H Presentation Manual.

 

Kansas

There is an 11-page pdf article from Kansas State University – Extension Harper County titled Thinking of doing a Talk or Demonstration at 4-H Day? WHY NOT! Here are some helpful hints! Another 6-page pdf article from July 2019 is titled Kansas 4-H Preparing and Using Visual Aids – Fact Sheet 7.0.

 

Maryland

A 26-page pdf article from February 2021 is titled the Maryland 4-H Public Speaking Guide.

 

Montana

A 64-page pdf article from the Montana State University Extension in 2016 is titled Montana 4-H Clover Communications.

 

North Carolina

A 18-page pdf article from May 2019 is titled North Carolina 4-H Presentations.

 

Orgeon

A 16-page pdf article from Oregon Cooperative Extension in January 2017 is titled 4-H Presentation Guide.

 

South Dakota

A 22-page pdf article from May 2019 is titled the South Dakota 4-H Public Presentation Guideline.

 

Texas

A 21-page pdf article from the Texas Agricultural Extension Service on June 1999 is titled Public Speaking…4-H Style. Another 16-page pdfarticle by Iris Kalich from the Texas Agricultural Extension Service is titled 4-H Public Presentation Guide: Method demonstrations & Illustrated Talks. And a 61-page pdf article from Texas A & M Agrilife EXTENSION is titled Explore Public Speaking Project.

 

Wisconsin

A 16-page pdf article from the University of Wisconsin Extension: 4-H Youth Development on December 2023 is titled A Parent’s Guide to Public Speaking.

 

Alberta

A 22-page pdf article from 4-H Alberta on September 2005 is titled Speaking Your Way to Success. And another massive 142-page pdf articleby Hugh Phillips from 4-H Alberta on October 2005 is titled 4-H Speak Pack – Communicating Effectively….the 4-H Way.

 

The 4-H emblem came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Teenage students need to learn how to speak up in classes

At The Atlantic on September 12, 2018 there was an article by Taylor Lorenz titled Teens are protesting in-class presentations. It was subtitled Some students say having to speak in front of the class is an unreasonable burden for those with anxiety and are demanding alternative options.   Presumably he meant those with the severe problem of a diagnosable social anxiety disorder (which used to be called social phobia). Public speaking phobia is a subset of social phobia. In his 13th paragraph he also claimed:

 “Anxiety is increasing at a faster rate than depression as the leading mental-health issue affecting teenagers, a recent study in the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics found.”

That magazine article was titled Epidemiology and impact of health care provider-diagnosed anxiety and depression among US children. It covered a far wider age range than just teenagers (ages 6 to 17), and reported on all anxiety rather than just social anxiety.

But there are good statistics on social anxiety in U. S. teens, which came from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication - Adolescent Supplement (NCS-A). As shown above in a bar chart, about 10% of teens have social anxiety disorder, which is an upper bound for the percentage with public speaking phobia. So, about 90% of teens don’t have a major problem with speaking up in class.

A magazine article about fears in the NCS-A reported that 24.9%, or one-quarter of teens feared speaking in class (and 35.8% feared performing for an audience). The other three-quarters of them had no fear. I blogged about this on June 11, 2012 in a post titled What social situations scare American adolescents, and what are their top 20 fears.

After that Atlantic article there were some dissenting replies. At Quartz on September 13, 2018 an article by Annabelle Timsit said Students are resisting in-class presentations. Here’s why teachers shouldn’t cave. On September 15, 2018 the Las Vegas Review-Journal had an editorial titled In defense of public speaking which remarked:

“It’s understandable that children want to avoid difficult things, like public speaking. The job of adults isn’t to indulge these juvenile fantasies but to help them develop the knowledge and skills needed to overcome the challenges they’ll face in life. That includes public speaking.
A school that doesn’t do that isn’t doing its job.”

After all, schools aren’t requiring public speaking just to be mean. It is part of the English Language Arts (ELA) in the Common Core standards. One web site about them notes that for grades 11 and 12 students should be able to:

“Present information, findings, and supporting evidence, conveying a clear and distinct perspective, such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning, alternative or opposing perspectives are addressed, and the organization, development, substance, and style are appropriate to purpose, audience, and a range of formal and informal tasks.”

You can find a more detailed discussion of the standards in a 2011 document from the State of Washington titled The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Mathematics: Analysis and Recommendations. (See page 6).

Yesterday at Forbes there was an article by Carmine Gallo titled Don’t abolish in-class presentations, teach students to enjoy public speaking. 

The image of students in a class was modified from one at Wikimedia Commons.

A brief book review of Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths of Introverts

Earlier this year a wonderful book for introverted kids and teens was published. It is Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths of Introverts by Susan Cain, with Gregory More and Erica Moroz. It follows-up her earlier book, Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking. In 2012 she also gave a widely viewed 19-minute TED Talk on The power of introverts.

Each chapter in Quiet Power contains several brief stories, and ends with a summary of points and usually a page of instructive cartoons by Grant Snider. For example, Chapter 13: Quiet in the Spotlight is about performing and sharing your talents with others. It has:

Introductory stories about Carly and Liam, followed by A Shy Introvert shines (Ryan), The Fairy Godmother Sings Soprano, A Nudge from Mom (Victoria), Free Trait Theory, and An Audience of Dolls (Caitlin). The Summary is titled How to Shine in the Spotlight, and it has sections titled Prepare, Study the Experts, Slowly Build the Pressure, Familiarize Yourself, Breathe, Smile, Connect, and Look Outward.  

The four main parts of this book and their chapters are:

PART ONE: SCHOOL
Chapter 1: Quiet in the Cafeteria
Chapter 2: Quiet in the Classroom
Chapter 3: Group Projects, the Introverted Way
Chapter 4: Quiet Leaders

PART TWO: SOCIALIZING
Chapter 5: Quiet Friendship
Chapter 6: Quiet Parties
Chapter 7: # Quiet
Chapter 8: Opposites Attract

PART THREE: HOBBIES
Chapter 9: Quiet Creativity
Chapter 10: The Quiet Athlete
Chapter 11: Quietly Adventurous
Chapter 12: Changing the World the Quiet Way
Chapter 13: Quiet in the Spotlight

PART FOUR: HOME
Chapter 14: The Restorative Niche
Chapter 15: Quiet with Family

CONCLUSION
THE QUIET REVOLUTION IN THE CLASSROOM: An Afterword for Teachers
A GUIDE FOR PARENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
INDEX

Quiet Power is not perfect. I disagree with her statement on page 249 in A Guide For Parents:

“But if your child is one of the many with stage fright - public speaking is the world’s most common phobia, afflicting extroverts as well as introverts - here are some ways to help him overcome it... “

That is an doubly inflated unsupported variation (both geographically and by fear level) of a statement in Quiet:

“...public speaking is the number-one fear in America, far more common than the fear of death.”

It would be much more useful to point out some real survey statistics on adolescent fears. Back on January 29, 2012 I blogged about Is public speaking the greatest fear for US teens? I discussed how in a 2005 Gallup poll it was not even in their top ten. On  June 11, 2012 I blogged about What social situations scare American adolescents, and what are their top 20 fears? In that post I discussed results for 14 situations from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication Adolescent Supplement (NCS-A). 24.9% feared speaking in class, compared with 13.3% for going out/dating. 

On February 18th NPR had an interview with Susan described in an article titled How Parents and Teachers Can Nurture the ‘Quiet Power’ of Introverts. It includes a discussion on public speaking.

I wish something like this book was around when I was a kid. How shy was I five decades ago, when I was in 10th grade? I was the second of five children - three boys Harry, Richard, and Thomas, and two girls - Ellen and Sally. After school Ellen was talking with a group of her girlfriends and waved to me to come over. I thought she might be playing matchmaker. No such luck. She had told them that her brothers really were named Tom, Dick and Harry (in reverse order), but they thought she was kidding. They all knew about Harry, the Eagle Scout who was a whiz at math and chemistry. And they all knew about Tom, the musical prodigy who became the lead cellist in the school orchestra while only in seventh grade. But I (Dick) was invisible. Until she introduced me, none of her friends believed that I even existed.   

Finally in 11th grade I really started to blossom. In trig class I got asked to put homework problems up on the blackboard and explain them. My classmates began to realize that I almost always got them right. I also was one of three 11th graders who took Advanced Placement (AP) chemistry, and got a 5 on the AP exam (meaning when I got to university I didn’t have to take either semester of freshman chemistry). On the qualifying test for National Merit Scholarships I was a semi-finalist, and also outscored a girl who later became one of four valedictorians (Later my sister Ellen got a National Merit Scholarship).

In 12th grade I  took both AP physics and calculus. I got a 5 on the AP exam for calculus, and a 3 on the one for physics. I began my freshman year at Carnegie-Mellon University with a semester worth of AP course credits. 

Helping teens fight their public speaking fear monster

Last Sunday, October 23rd, there was an excellent post by ‘Secondary Sara’ at the Secondary English Coffee Shop blog titled Making Public Speaking Less Scary For Teens. Her six main points are to:

1] Play with audience size

2] Practice in class
 
3] Develop a growth mindset
 
4] Pre-assess shy students
 
5] Keep the audience busy
 
6] Bring in other experts

Instead of having students speak to the entire class, she suggests splitting it in half, or dividing students into small groups. A survey of U.S. adults found that speaking to small groups was feared by just 15.2%, versus 30.2% for public speaking. See my July 22, 2011 blog post titled Putting the fear puzzle pieces together - social and specific fears in the National Comorbidity Survey.

Pre-assessing shy students is important. In another survey of U.S. adolescents, speaking in class was feared by 24.9% of them, which was the second most common social fear out of 14 situations. (Performing for an audience was first at 35.8%). See my June 11, 2012 blog post titled What social situations scare American adolescents, and what are their top 20 fears?

The image is from William Blake’s watercolor of The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun at Wikimedia Commons.

Using pop-up debate to teach adolescents not to be scared of speaking up in class

In the March 2015 issue of AMLE Magazine (from the Association for Middle Level Education) there was an article by Dave Stuart, Jr (who teaches history and English to ninth graders in Michigan) titled 5 Strategies for promoting college and career readiness. His first strategy was to Go Big on Argument. How can this be done? Dave says:

“First, form the day’s lesson around a debatable question. For example, rather than setting an objective that states ‘The students will demonstrate an understanding of the differences between Mayan and Aztec cultures,’ ask, ‘Which civilization would have been better to live in, the Mayan or the Aztec?’

The lesson can still look much the same as you would have taught it with the prior objective, except that now the exit ticket for the lesson can require students to answer the debatable question. The only way they can do this is by making a debatable claim and supporting it with evidence and reasoning. They’ll argue every day if you try this - and if your students are like mine, they will learn to love it.
Second, bring the power of argument into the classroom through simple, robust pop-up debates. The pop-up debate strategy is simple:

*  Every student speaks at least once, at most __ times (the maximum depends on your time constraints and the breadth of the debatable question you’ve posed).

*  To speak, students simply stand (‘pop’) up and talk. The first person to speak has the floor. When more than one student does this simultaneously, I coach them on how to practice self-control and social intelligence, yielding the floor politely.

*  In every debate, teach and assess one or two speaking skills. Sentence templates are an ideal scaffold for this.

Pop-up debate has become a favorite class activity in my room over the past few years, but keep in mind that it takes some skill to use the strategy well. You’re probably doing it right when kids start begging you for a debate.”

Pop up debate is a kinder, gentler activity than traditional debate that requires walking to the front of the classroom. How scary is that? In June 2012 I blogged about What social situations scare American adolescents, and what are their top 20 fears? A large careful, survey called the NCS-A found that the most common fear (35.8%) was Performing before an Audience, one version of which is a traditional debate. The second most common (24.9%) was Speaking in Class.

Dave described pop-up debate in more detail in a recent pair of articles on his web site. On August 14th there there was Starting strong with the transformative & simple Think-Pair-Share strategy. Dave described debate preparation by students first thinking about the topic alone, then discussing it with a student partner (pair), and finally going on to share with the whole class. On August 17th there was Beyond the Fear of Public Speaking: Making the First Pop-Op Debate a Success for All Students. Last year there also was a nine-minute YouTube video on Problems with Pop-Up Debates. 

Public speaking fear for adolescents in Japanese high schools

This year the results of a very large survey about fear of public speaking was published in Asia-Pacific Psychiatry magazine. That article by T. A. Furukawa et al was titled Public speaking fears and their correlates among 17,615 Japanese adolescents and appeared in Volume 6 on pages 99 to 104. In 2008 and 2009 they surveyed a sample of adolescents both in junior (grades 7 to 9, ages 12 to 15) and senior (grades 10 to 12, ages 15 to 18) high schools. Students were in both in Kochi Prefecture and Mie Prefecture (in its capital, Tsu City). You can read the abstract here at PubMed, or download a pdf of the full text here.

Students were asked:

“Have you had trembling hands, quavering voice or lost voice due to tension and anxiety when speaking in front of other people in the past month?”

They could answer No, Probably No, Probably Yes, or Yes. Only the last Yes answers were taken as a positive result.

An overall average of 7.3% reported public speaking fear. Detailed results from their Table 1 are shown above by age in a bar chart. The percentages ranged from 5.7% to 9.1%, and tended to decrease with increasing age.

Results for both females and males by age are shown above in another bar chart. At all ages females reported higher percentages that feared public speaking than males did. 

These percentages are similar to the 6.8% of Swedish adolescents in junior high school that reported a marked fear of speaking in front of the class.

These percentages are much lower than those reported for American adolescents in the NCS-A by Green et al ( 35.8% for Performing for an audience, and 24.9% for Speaking in class), but are not really comparable since the NCS-A asked for lifetime prevalence (Have you ever?) rather than monthly prevalence. 

Stage of Life survey of US teens

Back in March the StageOfLife.com web site had a national poll and writing contest for teens in the US. About 5700 of them visited their web site. The contest asked teens to write an essay with 500 words or less on the topic:

“When have you applied the phrase ‘No Fear‘ in your life?” 

Over 176 teens wrote essays. 445 of them responded to a fear survey with twelve questions. Results are in a Trend Report: Teens Overcoming Fear and a YouTube video summary. Scroll down that page to find links to 14 essays on fear of public speaking or performing.

Ten of the survey questions were yes/no ones about specific situations. The eleventh asked what area of life stresses you out more -  home (35.3%) or school (64.7%)? The twelfth question asked whit is you greatest fear right now, and was open response (fill in the blank). Detailed results are in a downloadable Acrobat file.

A bar chart shows their results for the yes-no survey questions about ten fear situations. (Click on it to see a larger, clearer version). The five top situations were:

Poor academic performance or not getting good grades (75.5%)

The future or life after graduation (66.3%)

Money (56.4%)

Having to audition or try out in order to be a part of something (53.9%)

Talking to teachers about personal problems (53.7%)

About 3 out of 4 teens feared poor academic performance, and 2 out of 3 feared the future. Slightly over half feared performance situations like auditions or try outs (which might include public speaking). These are up-to-date results and thus are very interesting. But, we need to keep in mind that they are not from a randomly selected sample and thus may not represent all teens.

Last June I blogged about What Social Situations Scare American Adolescents, and What Are Their Top 20 Fears? That post discussed the National Comorbidity Survey Replication Adolescent Supplement (NCS-A), which was a much larger survey (7682 responses) done about a decade ago, but using a random national sample. 

The bar chart shown above lists the top 20 fears based both on their 14 social situations and 6 screening questions. Note that the percentages are lower than in the Stage of Life survey. For example, in the NCS-A 20.3% feared talking to authority, while in the Stage of Life survey talking about personal problems to teachers (53.7%) or parents (51%) were feared by over twice as many teens. In the NCS-A 19.8% feared taking an importan exam, while in the Stage of Life survey 33.7% feared test taking.

Avoiding giving speeches is the most common social fear for Finnish adolescents

Last May I blogged about how avoiding giving speeches is the most common fear for Brazilian university students. In 2007 there was a magazine article by Klaus Ranta titled Age and gender differences in social anxiety symptoms during adolescence: The Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN) as a measure about a large study that used the Finnish version of the same survey tool called the Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN). It appeared in Psychiatry Research, volume 153, pages 261 to 270. You can read an abstract at PubMed, and find the full text of this article in the back of his academic dissertation on Social Phobia among Finnish Adolescents.

There were 5252 students in the study, with ages ranging from 12.8 to 16.9 years (2592 boys and 2650 girls).  3859 were in the 9th grade, with much smaller amounts of 612 in the 7th grade and 641 in the 8th grade (and 140 who didn’t supply grade information). Those students were given the Finnish SPIN, which evaluated 17 symptoms of fear and avoidance on a scale from 0 to 4 where:

0  = Not at all
1  = A little
2 = Somewhat
3 = Very much
4 = Extremely

 






















A bar chart shows the mean results from Table 4 of the article. (Click on it to see a larger, clearer version). Avoiding speeches was ranked first (at 1.75) and was significantly larger than the next four items (which clustered together). Those were fear of criticism (at 0.96), avoids being the center of attention (at 0.95), avoids embarrassment (at 0.93), and avoids talking to strangers (at 0.91). Being distressed by sweating was tenth (at 0.65).

The article also reported more detailed results - the percentages of students who answered 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 for each item. It is interesting to compare the sum of the percentages for 3 and 4 (Very much and Extremely), which were 28.4% for avoids speeches, 6.2% for fear of criticism, 7.5% for avoids being the center of attention, 6.6% for avoids embarrassment, and 5.6% for avoids talking to strangers.

Pekka Halonen’s painting of a boy on the shore came from here.

What social situations scare American adolescents, and what are their top 20 fears?

Last year there was a magazine article that answered the first question conclusively. It discussed some of the results from a national survey acronymed as the NCS-A. The article by Jennifer G. Green et al. titled “Validation of the diagnoses of panic disorder and phobic disorders in the US National Comorbidity Survey Replication Adolescent (NCS-A) supplement”, and appeared in the International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research (Volume 20, No. 2, pages 105 to 115). You can read an abstract here, or find the full text here.

The NCS-A was a face-to-face mental health survey of over 10,000 U.S. adolescents with ages from 13 to 17. It was done between February 2001 and January 2004. Not everyone completed the survey, so there were 7682 responses in the first column of Table 4 of that article.

 The bar chart shown above list the results for what percent feared 14 different social situations. (Click on it for an enlarged version). Performing for an audience (35.8%) was first, followed by speaking in class (24.9%). Generally more adolescents feared performance situations than interaction situations. 

What about specific fears, like heights, flying, and closed spaces? Those have not been analyzed in detail yet. However, data from the screening questions SC27A to 27F of the NCS-A is online.

Another bar chart adds those results (gray bars) to those from the Green et al article to produce a list of 20 fears, similar to what I did before with the National Comorbidity Survey-Replication (NCS-R) to make a list of 20 fears for a new millennium. Two of those specific fears have higher percentages than performing in public. So, as I discussed back in January, public speaking isn’t the greatest fear. 

The image of James Dean as a troubled 17-year-old came from the trailer to the 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause at Wikimedia Commons.

Top ten fears of Belgian Adolescents

A decade ago, in 2002, Peter Muris and Thomas H. Ollendick published an article on “The Assessment of Contemporary Fears in Adolescents Using a Modified Version of the Fear Survey Schedule for Children - Revised” in Anxiety Disorders magazine (Volume 16, pages 567 to 584). You can read the abstract here.

They surveyed 551 Belgian adolescents, with ages ranging from 12 to 19 (297 girls and 254 boys). Those adolescents were given the Hawaiian version of Fear Survey Schedule for Children - Revised (acronymed as the FSSC-HI), which has 80 items. Survey participants responded to each item by marking either None, Some, or A Lot. The most common fears were the ten fears with the highest means at the A Lot level. Public speaking was covered in Item 65, which is:

 “Having to talk in front of my class”

The Top Ten most common fears (in their Table 6) were:

1. AIDS
2. Being killed or murdered
3. Family member dying
4. Being raped
5. Bombing attacks - being invaded
6. Nuclear war
7. Being kidnapped
8. Drowning
9. Myself dying
10. Germs or getting a serious disease

Having to talk in front of my class wasn’t one of them. Only one item on this list, bombing attacks, is the same as the list in the cross-cultural survey discussed my previous post.

A bar chart (shown above, click to enlarge) displays the percent of adolescents reporting each of those fears.

Another bar chart compares the results for the 12 to 15 year olds and the 16 to 19 year olds. The younger group had a higher percent for eight of the ten fears; with the similar exceptions of AIDS and germs or getting a serious disease.

A third bar chart compares the results for boys and girls. A higher percent of the girls reported all ten fears.

Top ten fears of children in the United States, Australia, China, and Nigeria

Our cavalcade of what children fear continues with a broader survey. In 1996 Thomas H. Ollendick, Bin Yang, Neville J. King, Qi Dong, and Abebowale Akande published an article titled “Fears in American, Australian, Chinese, and Nigerian Children and Adolescents: A Cross-Cultural Study,” in a magazine called The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (V37, pages 213 to 220). You can find an abstract here. They surveyed 300 children in each country, with 50 boys and 50 girls chosen at each of three predetermined age levels (7 to 10, 11 to 13, and 14 to 17).

Ollendick et al used the Fear Survey Schedule for Children - Revised (acronymed as the FSSC-R) which has 80 items. Survey participants respond to each item by marking either None, Some, or A Lot. The most common fears were the ten fears with the highest means at the level of A Lot. Public speaking was covered in Item 1, which is:

“Giving an oral report”

The Top Ten common fears (from the entire pooled sample) were:

1. Not able to breathe
2. Hit by a car or truck
3. Bombing attacks
4. Earthquakes
5. Fire - getting burned
6. Falling from a high place
7. Failing a test
8. Having my parents argue
9. Getting poor grades
10. Death/dead people

A bar chart (shown above, click to enlarge) displays the percent of children reporting each of the common top ten fears (their Table 2). Giving an oral report isn’t there.

For American children, seven of the ten fears in their Top Ten were the same as the common ones:

Not able to breathe
Hit by a car or truck
Bombing attacks
A burglar breaking into our house (replacing Earthquakes)
Fire - getting burned
Falling from a high place
Looking foolish (replacing Failing a test)
Getting lost in a strange place (replacing Having my parents argue)
Getting poor grades
Death/dead people

For Australian children, eight of the ten fears in their Top Ten were the same as the common ones:

Not able to breathe
Hit by a car or truck
Bombing attacks
Earthquakes
Fire - getting burned
Falling from a high place
Failing a test
Having my parents argue
A burglar breaking into our house (replacing Getting poor grades)
Germs/getting a serious illness (replacing Death/dead people)

For Chinese children, seven of the ten fears in their Top Ten were the same as the common ones:

Not able to breathe
Hit by a car or truck
Getting a shock from electricity (replacing Bombing attacks)
Earthquakes
Fire - getting burned
Bears (replacing Falling from a high place)
Failing a test
Having my parents argue
Getting poor grades
Ghosts or spooky things (replacing Death/dead people)

For Nigerian children, six of the ten fears in their Top Ten were the same as the common ones:

Snakes (replacing Not able to breathe)
Hit by a car or truck
Bombing attacks
Earthquakes
Guns (replacing Fire - getting burned)
Falling from a high place
Getting a shock from electricity (replacing Failing a test)
Deep water/ocean (replacing Having my parents argue)
Getting poor grades
Death/dead people

So, for children in all four of these countries, public speaking (giving an oral report) wasn’t even in the top ten - or remotely near being the number one fear typically claimed to occur for American adults.

Is public speaking the greatest fear for US teens?

Last week I read a news story with the usual comical “statistic” from Jerry Seinfeld:

“On Saturday, hundreds of students from across eastern Montana turned out to Rocky Mountain College in Billings for the Class "A" Eastern Divisional Speech, Drama and Debate Tournament.

‘The two greatest fears are death and public speaking,’ said Billings Central Catholic High School head coach Mark Elison. ‘And death is second’.”

Does that claim really apply to teens?

On March 29, 2005 Gallup reported the results (shown above, click to enlarge) for their poll about What frightens America’s youth? They asked a sample of 1028 teenagers (ages 13 to 17) between January 17th and February 6th of 2005. Teens were asked what they were most afraid of, in an open-ended format. Terrorist attacks were the top fear, followed by ties for spiders and death, and  then being a failure, war and heights. Note that public speaking isn’t anywhere on this top ten list.  

These results reminded me of a Sherlock Holmes story, Silver Blaze, in which Holmes tried to draw the inspector’s interest to what he called the curious incident of the dog in the night-time. The inspector replied that the dog did nothing, which Holmes then said was very curious (since it would have barked if a stranger was approaching). 

The sleeping dog image is from Wikimedia Commons.

Social fears of Swedish adolescents in junior high school

In 2009, results from a survey of marked fears in 2,128 Swedish adolescents were published (see above bar chart). Click the image to enlarge it. Their data were collected from students in grades 6 to 8 (aged 12 to 14) back in 2005. Students came from five different municipalities, and there were 1136 girls and 992 boys. The detailed reference is: T. Furmark, M. Tillfors, P.-O. Everz, I. Marteinsdottir, O. Gefvert, M. Frederikson, “Social phobia in Swedish adolescents, ”Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, V44, pages 441 to 447, 2009. You can find an abstract here. It notes that this age group is in the at-risk period for developing social phobia.

Only 6.8% of the students reported a marked fear of speaking in front of the class. This was larger than any of the other 7 specific categories. Making a phone call to someone unfamiliar was second, feared by 4.8%. A marked fear of at least one social situation was reported by 13.8% of the group.

It is interesting to compare these results with those from the 1999 survey of the Swedish general public that I discussed in my previous post. For both making a phone call to someone unfamilar and initiating a conversation with someone unfamilar the percentages are almost a perfect match. But, while 24% of adults feared speaking (or performing) in front of a group of people, only 6.2% of the adolescents feared speaking in front of the class.

Joy of talking with high school students

On March 14th I spoke to the Toastmasters Youth Leadership Program at the Meridian Medical Arts Charter School. Patty Canto, the Vice President: Membership from Capitol Club, had asked for volunteers to speak.

I gave a ten-minute speech with PowerPoint slides. It was a technical mystery story called the “Case of the Corroded Computer.”

Almost twenty years ago there was a luxury car dealer who was getting ready to move into a remodeled vintage building in a state capital. Everyone was in a big hurry to get the move completed.

The last step before moving in the cars and the shop equipment was having a contractor come to clean the white tile floor for the showroom. The contractor was told it was OK for him to use hydrochloric acid on the discolored grout, so he did.

On the next day the dealer called and accused him of destroying a brand new minicomputer located in the bookkeeper’s office. The contractor said that was impossible, since his crew had not even been in the carpeted bookkeeper’s office, and the door had always been locked.

The contractor called his insurance company, and they sent a claims adjuster out. She wanted an independent technical evaluation of the damage. A chemist and I went to look at the computer. All the screws on the case were rusty brown instead of shiny silver color. Chemical tests on the motherboard revealed exposure to hydrochloric acid (HCl).

How did the acid (HCl) get there? The building had a forced air heating system. A furnace was located in the back of the showroom, just outside of the bookkeeper’s office. The cold air inlet was located just a few inches above the tile floor. The very first hot air outlet from the furnace led right into the bookkeeper’s office. Unfortunately that outlet was located on the wall directly above the computer, so it got an acid vapor bath. Oops!

After our report the insurer for the contractor bought the dealer a new computer. They got the “old” one to salvage. By hindsight the computer should not have been there yet.

Back in November 2008 I told this story to another group of younger students (4th to 6th grade). I had updated one of my slides to include the molecular weight for hydrochloric acid (36.4), and those for oxygen (32), nitrogen (28) and air (29). When I asked these high school students if hydrochloric acid vapor was lighter or heavier than air, several immediately said it was heavier because it had a larger molecular weight than air.

I forgot to mention to either set of students that the preceding story resembles a Sherlock Holmes story about murder in a locked room, called the Adventure of the Speckled Band.

More adolescents and young adults still feared tests than feared public speaking

Back in October 2009 I blogged about a survey of 3021 young people (ages 14 to 24) in Munich, Germany that was reported back in 1999. That sample was followed-up for another decade.

Results were reported in a paper by Knappe et al. published last month in the Journal of Psychiatric Research (Volume 45, No. 1, pages 111 - 120). The paper was titled: "Social fears and social phobia types among community youth: differential clinical features and vulnerability factors." You can find the abstract here.

Like in the previous paper, more young people feared tests than feared public speaking. This time 28.1% feared taking tests or exams, while 24.8% (a quarter) feared public speaking. Last time 18.2% had feared tests and 13.1% feared public speaking.

They also reported the frequencies of social fears for both genders. Females had higher percentages for all fears than males. They analyzed the survey data in many other ways.

They also reported the frequencies of social fears for the subgroup of 209 people with a diagnosis of DSM-IV social phobia. This subgroup reported much higher frequencies of fears than the total sample.

In a follow-up post I will discuss another interesting result that they found.

More adolescents and young adults feared tests than feared public speaking

Do adolescents and young adults have different social fears than adults? They do. A decade ago the results of a survey of 3021 young people in Munich, Germany (ages 14 to 24) were reported. You can read the abstract here. The bar chart below shows the six specific social fears reported in Table 2. Performance situations/tests topped the list at 18.2%, while public speaking came in second at 13.2%. For that age range test anxiety is a big problem that affects about 1 in 5 people.